YE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. A NAVAL ODE. Ye Mariners of England! That guard our native seas: Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, Your glorious standard launch again And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow: While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave!- As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain-waves, With thunders from her native oak, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow. The meteor flag of England Till danger's troubled night depart, When the storm has ceased to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow.-CAMPBELL. THE TRIUMPHS OF OUR LANGUAGE. Now gather all our Saxon bards, Let harps and hearts be strung, To celebrate the triumphs of Our own good Saxon tongue; For stronger far than hosts that march It goes, with FREEDOM, THOUGHT, and TRUTH, Stout Albion learns its household lays On every surf-worn shore, And Scotland hears it echoing far As Orkney's breakers roar From Jura's crags and Mona's hills And warms with eloquence and song On many a wide and swarming deck The fresh and fruitful West. It spreads where winter piles deep snows It glads Acadia's misty coasts, And bides where, gay with early flowers, It lives by clear Itasca's lake, It sounds in Borneo's camphor groves, In fields that curb old Ganges' flood, And towers of proud Bombay. It wakes up Aden's flashing eyes, Tasmania's maids express their thoughts It dwells where Afric's southmost capes It kindles realms so far apart, And lands for which the Southern Cross It goes with all that prophets told, With Shakspeare's deep and wondrous verse, And Milton's soaring mind, With Alfred's laws, and Newton's lore, To cheer and bless mankind. Mark, as it spreads, how deserts bloom, As vanishes the mist of night But grand as are the victories Whose monuments we see, These are but as the dawn which speaks Of noontide yet to be. Still more then may it speed the time, When Christian states, grown just and wise, When earth's oppressed and savage tribes All taught to prize these English words FAITH, FREEDOM, HEAVEN, and HOME.-LYONS. INFLUENCE OF SHAKSPEARE OVER THE HUMAN MIND. Shakspeare was the profoundest thinker, the wittiest, the airiest, the most fantastic spirit (reconciling the extremes of ordinary natures) that ever condescended to teach and amuse mankind. He plunged into the depths of speculation; he penetrated to the inner places of knowledge, plucking out "the heart of the mystery;" he soared to the stars; he trod the earth, the air, the waters. Every element yielded him rich tribute. He surveyed the substances and the spirits of each; he saw their stature, their power, their quality, and reduced them without an effort to his own divine command. There is nothing more detestable in literature than the system of rating an author by his defects instead of by his merits,—of estimating him by what he does not, rather than by what he does accomplish. The French writers say that Shakspeare is guilty of extravagance, of anachronisms, of undue and coarse jesting, and of fifty other inconsistencies;-and so he is. But we do not build up his pyramid of fame upon such unholy ground. It is not because he has crowded tragedy and farce together, nor because he has laid prostrate the unities, that we worship him. But it is because he has outshone all writers of all nations, in dramatic skill, in fine knowledge of humanity, in sweetness, in pathos, in humour, in wit, and in poetry. It is because he has subdued every passion to his use, and explored and made visible the inequalities and uttermost bounds of the human mind,-because he has embodied the mere nothings of the air, and made personal and probable the wildest anomalies of superstition,-because he has tried everything, and failed in nothing,-because, in fine, he has displayed a more stupendous intellect, a more wondrous imagination, and has attempted and effected more than the whole French dramatists, from Corneille to the author of yesterday,-that we bow down in silent admiration before him, and give ourselves up to a completer homage than we would descend to pay to any other writer. He was the true magician, before whom the astrologers and Hermetic sages were nothing, and the Arabian wizards grew pale. He did not, indeed, trace the Sybils' book, nor the Runic rhyme. Nor did he drive back the raging waters or the howling winds: but his power stretched all over the human mind, from wisdom to fatuity, from joy to despair, and embraced all the varieties of our uncertain nature. He it was, at whose touch the cave of Prospero opened and gave out its secrets. To his bidding Ariel appeared. At his call arose the witches and the earthy Caliban, the ghost who made night hideous," the moonlight fays, Titania and Oberon, and the rest. He was the "so potent" master, before whom bowed kings and heroes, and jewelled queens, men wise as the stars, and women fairer than the morning. All the vices and virtues of life were explained by him; and the passions stood plain before him. From the cradle to the coffin he drew them all. He created, for the benefit of wide posterity and for the aggrandizement of human nature,-lifting earth to Heaven, and revealing the marvels of this lower world, and piercing even the shadowy secrets of the grave. 66 Anonymous. SHAKSPEARE. Centuries have roll'd on centuries-years on years; Has swept the mighty and the mean away, Are but unspeaking stones, where lies enshrin'd Eternal silence. But peerless Shakspeare Pours forth still from his exhaustless stores of mind, All truth-all passion-and all poetry; Mounting with tireless wing on every wind, MILTON AND HIS PROSE WRITINGS. In his character the noblest qualities of both the Puritans and the Royalists were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle, and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans he lived "As ever in his Great Task-master's eye." Like them he kept his mind constantly fixed on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. Hence he acquired their contempt of eternal circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, and their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to innocent pleasures. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless, all the estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely monopolized by the party of the despot. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the Song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. The illusions which captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers. The states |